Judy Rey Wasserman's Art & Scripture Blog

Blue chip art is proven to be one of the best investments I both boon times and times of recession, as shown by the Mei Moses Fine Art Index. Plus, in modern history recessions and depressions have also proven to be fabulous opportunities for art investors to discover new, emerging artists who become the blue chip artists from that time period. The secret is to know what exactly to look for and buy.

While the economy and stock market continue to falter, blue chip galleries and auctions show increasing signs of revival and outright strength.

Yet, dealers continue to promote the idea that the best reason to buy art is because a person likes it (or love it). Most prominent dealers confirm that they advise their clients to only collect works that they love. While this works for other personal luxury purchases, such as watches, Jimmy Choo shoes and vehicles, after a certain price point, original art should always be understood as an investment.

The same dealers back up their artists in terms of their art education, previous shows, prominent collectors and past selling history to help a new collector feel secure. Over time, this security may prove false. There is a glut of many artists who have MFAs from excellent art schools who are failing to make a living at art or, more importantly innovate in any important way. And, there is also a glut of good, mid career artists, even artists whose works are in famous museums, whose works will never reach true blue chip status for the same reason.

During this recession collectors are showing that their best reason to buy art is because it is a good investment. Even the Nazi’s knew that art was an extremely valuable possession. This is why the stole so much art that they personally did not “love”, as it was the antithesis of their so-called ideals, as it was beloved or created by Jews, like Kandinsky.

Fine art has proven to be one of the very best investments ever, rivaling an early investment in Google – but like stocks, all fine art is not equally valuable for investors.

Essentially, there are two sure ways to invest well in art.

First Way to Invest Profitably in Art

The first is to invest in an important or significant work by a blue chip artist. A blue chip artist can be understood as an easily recognized name, a kind of brand, like Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Turner, Pissarro and Monet and Degas, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Rothko, Johns or Weiner, etc.

Generally, a blue chip artist influences other innovative artists—who in turn influence other artists. In the above simple and short list, spanning from Caravaggio to Jasper Johns and Lawrence Weiner you can see how one innovative artist’s works inspires another.

Jasper Johns and Lawrence Weiner are contemporary living artists, but my work guarantees that them as prime influencers and thus, blue chip artists who will remain such over coming centuries. I am founding Post Conceptual Art theory – painting with symbols as strokes, which is a radically new step in the history of art. I have taken the inspiration of their letters and numbers and used them as strokes in a traditional painterly manner. In no way am I copying them, but I am standing on their shoulders. If you can afford it, buy the best works of Johns and Weiner – learning this from the likes of me is as close as you can get to insider art trading.

There are other names, including contemporary ones, which are easily recognized that may not be true blue chip artists. It is questionable that their art will influence other artistic innovators. Some of these artists may be incredible artists who quickly followed innovators like Pissarro and Monet and Degas, and as such carved a kind of historic spot for themselves, like Childe Hassam. Yet Hassam was not the innovator, and somehow, as a young girl wandering the Metropolitan and Museum of Modern Art the Impressionists who inspired me were Pissarro and Monet and Degas. Even though I was uneducated, their authenticity of innovation shone through to me.

The innovators are artists who found new techniques and focuses for making art. They do more than simply have their own recognizable style—they have their own unique way.

Many other chains of artistic innovators leading to artistic innovators may be easily constructed. It is kind of like the game of six degrees of separation played out over the timeline of art history.

Second, Less Expensive Way to Invest Profitably in Art

The second way to make “a killing” by investing in art – is to buy the early works of an artistic innovator before they are really discovered and their prices zoom skyward. This is easy advise but historically difficult to do. It is much like recognizing a nascent Google investment opportunity.

Ironically, in Modern and Contemporary times — when dealers are the middlemen between artists and patrons — the work of an emerging artistic innovator is almost always immediately unnoticed, unappreciated and even shunned, especially by the establishment.

When the Impressionists banded together to show their works, they were not only rejected by the establishment, they were ridiculed. Nothing sold.

Andy Warhol’s first show of his now iconic Soup Cans and Brillo Boxes was a complete dud. Nothing sold. His dealer, Irving Blum, took pity on him and bought some of the paintings for a pittance. A few years later this made him a very rich man.

Oh, and van Gogh. His otherwise successful art dealer and brother, Theo, only managed to sell one of his then strange seeming paintings in his lifetime.

Jackson Pollock spent cold winters in Springs, on the Eastern End of Long Island as heat is expensive and his works were not selling.

Lawrence Weiner spent cold winters on his houseboat in the Netherlands as heat is expensive and his works were not selling, although by that time Pollock’s were highly valued..

Why do people fail to immediately see artistic innovators? Ironically the answer is in the question, the work of artistic innovators are actually more difficult to see and understand that the work of artists who have already been accepted and are well known.

To see anything we need similar memories. Ninety percent of vision happens in the brain as it decodes impressions of light received from the eyes. It is actually much easier – and we are more accurate at—perceiving art (or anything) that is more familiar to us. We have more memories of this being art. We have learned to see the older art as art.

Keep in mind that any art that sells well will “inspire” other artists to paint in a similar copy-cat way. Copy-cats are not innovators. There are many “Pop” artists today who have developed slightly different styles from Warhol, Lichtenstein. The puzzle is how to tell if something new that somehow does not seem like art, possible is harder to see or understand as art, is something radical, is actually art or just awful. The questions to ask are: 1.) is this artist painting in a new and unique way that can be copied by others? If the answer to that is yes, the next question that also must be affirmative is: Does this new way (or method, or focus) have the potential to inspire other future artistic innovators?

What the Successful Investor Needs (Besides Money)

Recognized Blue Chip

To discover and collect a work by a recognized blue chip artist you need a great education in art or the help of excellent art dealers and advisers, plus a great deal of money. When an artist-innovator mentions the artists who influenced them, if any are underpriced or valued contemporary artists buy the art of the influencer and the new innovator.

In God We Trust series 

All Strokes: Exodus 20 (Ten Commandments) in Torah Font

Plus numbers, artists signature, “series” and “Exodus 20-Ten Commandments in English.
Original Digital Print combining pen & ink paintings by the artist.

Emerging Investors and Innovators

Finding new innovative artists may also be accomplished through dealers and galleries, especially those that feature emerging artists. However, your fingers can also do the walking online, through sites like artnet.com, artprice.com, the sites the art auction houses, plus, for the really new, by watching and finding artists through social media sites like artists’ blogs, Twitter, Facebook and You Tube. New innovators, those who are currently innovating – rather than hoeing the innovative paths they previously created – are most likely found in places that are also innovative, which at present includes social media.

Investing profitably in art takes money, but not necessarily a great deal of money. Herbert Vogel, a postman, and his wife Dorothy, a librarian in the Brooklyn Public Library, managed to amass a Modern and Contemporary art collection worth a fortune that they donated to the National Gallery. What the Vogels really invested was their time.

The Vogels met and befriended artists and bought works early in the artists’ careers. The only real advantage the Vogels had was their location, they were in New York City before the Internet and then Social Media was invented.

Today work by truly innovative emerging artists can be found for under $5,000 USA , and easily for under $10,000 for good sized works. While New York City remains the center of the Art World, every innovative artist and gallery in NYC, plus most of the rest of the world, can be found on the Internet. Anyone with a PC is in the right place at the right time.

To make collecting this new work more enticing note that almost always the early works of an artist are considered to be the most valuable. For example, only now are Warhol’s later works, such as the large Last Supper paintings, nearing the value of his Soup Cans.

So while the stock market jitters, gold soars and real estate tanks check out investing in art. The images you see, the ideas you come in contact with, the artists you will meet will be much more inspiring and interesting than the average broker. Plus, you are now armed with the insider art knowledge that what you need to find are the innovators.

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art at ungravenimage.com.

Post Conceptual UnGraven Image Art theory is based at the intersection of ancient spiritual wisdom and cutting-edge contemporary science. It shows us a new and enhanced spiritual and science-based way to see the world. It is a life changing vision that can even become an actual new way of seeing that is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Can this be true? See for yourself.

Check out the Fine Art Limited Edition prints, decorative prints, books, and printables that are currently available to you through Judy Rey’s Art of Seeing The Divine Shop. You don’t have to buy to avail yourself of the art and inspiration available there. However, if you select to collect investment quality archival art, or decorate your home with images created with strokes that are original letters from Bible texts, or buy a gift for someone special, there is a secure shopping cart that accepts most credit cards so your purchase is easy to accomplish. https://artofseeingthedivine.com.